In London, the public life has literally come to a halt. Schools were closed, the running of the buses and trains were affected

Abdul Gaffar choudhury

I have been living in London for the last 44 years. I have seen a lot of disasters and catastrophes in London life. The flood in the Thames which is now protected by a strong dam, the burning of a sky high residential building in which 72 people died, the deaths from mad cow disease, the terror attacks by IRA which killed a man like Lord Mountbatten, thereafter, terror attacks by the jihadists and many more such occurrences. I still remember during IRA terrorism we had to leave the train or bus within a minute's notice and sometimes the bombing in a main shopping centre like Harrods, London's main streets remained deserted for hours. I have seen heavy snow fall and snow storms almost 9-10 years ago, but what is now going on not only in Great Britain but throughout almost all of Europe, is very chaotic and fearful. A continuous heavy snowfall and snow storm have paralyzed the life of the most developed continent. A London paper reported, "The freezing weather is set to continue for more than a week. The cold snap is also affecting swathes of Europe with one death in London and several deaths in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark".

In London, the public life has literally come to a halt. Schools were closed, the running of the buses and trains were affected. Glasgow airport suspended all its flights. Dozens of flights are also scrapped at Heathrow. I live in a suburb of London, but for the last 4 days (since 26th February to 1st March) I have been imprisoned at home not by the police but by nature. Thanks to the modern technology that our communication with the outside world was not disrupted, otherwise, it could be a life living in a black hole. There is a constant fight between nature and science. Science's victory is continuous but sometimes nature's revenge is vicious. The heavy snowfall and its associate storm called Emma is being called as the 'Beast from East' because it came from Siberia. People are afraid what will be the effect of the attack of this 'beast'. It has already affected the communication and economy badly.

In my childhood we were told that one day our planet will be destroyed. All the religions predicted this doomsday in which all life and the planet will be annihilated. Later on, scientists also predicted a doomsday for planet earth. But with its advancement to protect life and environment, many scientists are hopeful that science will be ultimately victorious over nature and will be able to save the world with all its creatures. But they say that this prediction will only come true if the world and its civilization can survive from man-made disasters. Recently some intellectuals in Europe warned the world population that they fear a nuclear war is more probable than any other time. They think the possibility increased with the victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election of America.

I am an ordinary journalist. But my intuition is that the possibility of a nuclear war has decreased after Donald Trump's victory. He is a pompous man and wants to show off his strength which he lacks. Moreover, he is now under tremendous pressure for his alleged connection with Russia during presidential election. Most of his White House associates selected by him, were either ousted or forced to resign. His utterances against North Korea over nuclear armaments has been proved till now to be empty threats. The western powers wanted to portray, Kim, the North Korean leader as a mad war dog without any intelligence. They could not prove it. So far, Kim has won the diplomatic war against Trump. He ignored all the threat by Trump and tried to improve relationship with brotherly South Korea. Kim sent his sister to the Olympic in South Korea. She received a tremendous welcome there. She sat by the side of Ivanka, the daughter of President Trump and an American General and her speech that the people of North and South are people of the same blood was applauded by the whole South Korean crowd.

In South Korea America's military presence and war conspiracies are now exposed to the people of that country. They know if there is a war between America and North Korea, then America would want to use South Korea as a protective shield and the country will be destroyed. Thousands of students of South Korean universities every month came out in the street and gave slogan against American military base and demanded its removal. After the visit of Kim's sister to South Korea, the American observers also expressed their opinion that North and South Korea are coming nearer each other day by day and America's day to play these two Koreas against each other will end very soon.

In the Middle-east also, America will continue playing war games to keep Israel's existence and its dominance in the area so long Iran does not become another North Korea and the decaying influence of puppet Kings and Sheikhs of America in the Arab land come to an end. So it can be presumed that for sometimes local war and war of traditional arms may continue but a nuclear war is not possible in near future. If America was the only nuclear power in the world there would have been more Hiroshima and Nagasaki by this time. But thanks to God now many more countries like Russia, China, India and Pakistan are nuclear powers and North Korea and Iran might join the nuclear club very soon. American empire is slowly decaying day by day.

In the opinion of many scientists the planet's most dangerous enemy is now not the nuclear arms but the environmental pollution and the revengeful destructive movement of nature. The world should now realize the consequence of this aggression is only death by numerous deadly diseases which is the by-product of pollution of nature. For this pollution mankind is responsible. They are destroying nature's benevolent side and are not ready to prevent its destructive hand. Europe is now devastated by earthquakes, snowfall, snowstorms, and by other natural disasters. Asia and Africa are suffering from cyclone, flood, landslides, river erosion, droughts and its associated diseases.

People of both developed and developing countries are aware of these great dangers but they are not ready to fight against this ultimate enemy of mankind. Global capitalism is trying to use the power of science and technology for their profit making schemes like armaments, but does not allow the power of science to save the world and human civilization. Now the time has come for people to unite and force their leaders to jointly fight the real enemy of this planet and its inhabitants.